Music
Our curriculum leader for Music is Frances Smith
Key Stage 1 and 2 Music Curriculum Statement
- Singing at the local Church's Harvest Celebrations
National Curriculum Purpose of Study
Music is a universal language that embodies one of the highest forms of creativity. A high quality music education should engage and inspire pupils to develop a love of music and their talent as musicians, and so increase their self-confidence, creativity and sense of achievement. As pupils progress, they should develop a critical engagement with music, allowing them to compose, and to listen with discrimination to the best in the musical canon.
Curriculum Intent
At Houghton Primary School we value Music as an important part of our creative curriculum. We aspire to develop our pupils’ creativity and self–expression through exposing them to a diverse diet of musical styles and genres chosen from different cultures and periods of history. Through our curriculum we hope to inspire a lifelong appreciation and curiosity for the subject and to develop our pupils’ ability to:
Listen and respond to different musical style
Be confident performers using their voice and a range of tuned and untuned instruments.
Understand and use a range of musical terminology
Compose their own musical compositions
Evaluate and improve their work through discussion with others
Curriculum Implementation
At Houghton Primary School we follow the National Curriculum Music programmes of study, but aim to develop the children’s skills and experiences further by making purposeful, appropriate and fun links to the wider curriculum where possible. We aim to give the children meaningful opportunities to sing, listen, play, perform and evaluate. Our music curriculum is delivered in classroom lessons, weekly singing assemblies, performances and extracurricular activities. The language of music is taught in lessons in order that pupils have a shared vocabulary to respond to, critique and evaluate the music they create and encounter.
We follow the ‘Sing Up’ music curriculum which offers a rich and diverse variety of musical encounters from many genres, cultures and historical periods. Our curriculum progressively develops the children’s musical skills as they journey through our school.
Within lessons we utilise the school’s selection of tuned and untuned percussion instruments which includes class sets of glockenspiels. We also take opportunities to use technology whenever appropriate, composing music digitally using 2Beat, 2 Explore and Busy Beats.
We aim to support children who wish to take up an instrument, currently offering drum lessons within school.
Curriculum Impact
Assessment of Music skills is ongoing (formative) during lessons. Teachers use the skills statements to assess and use this responsively to support children as necessary.
At the end of each unit teachers assess children’s knowledge through low stakes quizzes and similar activities. Knowledge is revisited over the course of the year to support long term memory and retrieval.
Enrichment
We offer parents the opportunity for their children to learn drums and piano through private music lessons on site. We also have an active school choir who perform within the local community. Each year we put on special Christmas Concerts and School Productions.